The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Unabridged AudioBook

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, the story is set in New York City and Long Island during the summer of 1922. The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." After the shock and chaos of the First World War, American society enjoyed unprecedented degrees of success during the 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban found on the sale and expenditure of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, produced millionaires from bootleggers and encouraged organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamour of the age, he was uncomfortable with all the unrestrained materialism and deficiency of morality that went with it.

The Great Gatsby wasn't favored upon initial printing and sold fewer than 25,000 duplicates during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's existence.

Although it was adapted into both a Broadway play along with a Hollywood movie within a year of publication, it was mostly overlooked during the Great Depression and World War II. After it was republished in 1945 and 1953, it swiftly found a broad readership, and is today frequently considered the Great American Novel. It is today a standard text in significant school and college guides on American literature in nations all over the world.

About the Author F. Scott Fitzgerald:

(from Wikipedia) Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an Irish American Jazz Age writer of novels and brief stories . He is considered among the largest twentieth century writers. Fitzgerald was of the self-styled the "Lost Generation", Americans born in the 1890s who came of age during World War I. He completed 4 novels, left a fifth unfinished, and wrote dozens of brief stories that treat themes of youth, despair, and age. Early years

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, to an upper-middle class Roman Catholic family, Fitzgerald was called for his distant and distinguished relative Francis Scott Key, but was commonly recognised as 'Scott'. He invested 1898–1901 and 1903–1908 in Buffalo, New York, where his dad worked for Procter & Gamble. When Fitzgerald, Sr. was fired, the family moved back to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy and Summit School in St. Paul from 1908–1911. He then attended Newman School, a prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1911–1912. He entered Princeton University in 1913 as a member of the Class of 1917 and became neighbors with all the future critics and writers Edmund Wilson (Class of 1916) and John Peale Bishop (Class of 1917). A mediocre student throughout his three-year profession at the college, Fitzgerald dropped out in 1917 to enlist in the United States Army when the U.S.A entered World War I. His initial piece of literature was published in his school newspaper when he was 13. Fearing he would die in the war, and determined to leave a literary legacy, Fitzgerald wrote a novel titled The Romantic Egotist while in officer training at Camp Zachary Taylor and Camp Sheridan. When Fitzgerald submitted the novel to the publisher Charles Scribner's Sons, the editor praised Fitzgerald but eventually declined to publish. The war ended after Fitzgerald's enlistment, and he was discharged without ever having been shipped to Europe, so it is very a great tribute to his imagination that the description of the front line in 'Tender is the Night' is rated as among the right on its topic. He frequently stated how much he regretted not fighting in the war.

Marriage to Zelda Sayre

While at Camp Sheridan, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre (1900–1948), the "top bitch," in Fitzgerald's words, of Montgomery, Alabama youth society. She was the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Judge. The 2 were involved in 1919, and Fitzgerald moved into an apartment at 1395 Lexington Avenue in New York City to test to lay a foundation for his lifetime with Zelda. Working at an advertising fast and composing brief stories, he was unable to persuade Zelda that he could help her, leading her to break off the engagement.

Fitzgerald returned to his parents' apartment in St. Paul to change The Romantic Egotist. Recast as This Side of Paradise, it was accepted by Scribner's in the fall of 1919, and Zelda and Scott resumed their engagement. The novel was published on March 26, 1920, and became the most prevalent books of the year, defining the flapper generation. Scott and Zelda were married in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Their daughter and just child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921.

"The Jazz Age"

The 1920s proven the many influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. His 2nd novel, The Beautiful and Damned, published in 1922, demonstrates an development beyond the comparatively immature This Side of Paradise. The Great Gatsby, Scott's masterpiece, was published in 1925. Fitzgerald prepared many excursions to Europe, notably Paris and the French Riviera, and became neighbors with several members of the American expatriate community in Paris, notably Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway looked as much as Fitzgerald as an experienced pro author. Hemingway greatly admired The Great Gatsby and wrote in his A Moveable Feast "If he may write a book because fine because The Great Gatsby I was certain that he can write an even greater one" (153). Heminway expressed his deep admiration for Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald's flawed, doomed character, when he prefaced his chapters concerning Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast with:

His talent was because all-natural because the pattern which was produced by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At once he understood it no over the butterfly did and he didn't understand when it was brushed or marred. Later he became aware of his damaged wings and their construction and he learned to think and couldn't fly anymore because the love of flight was gone and he may just remember when it had been easy. (129)

Fitzgerald drew mostly upon his wife's intense, mentally disturbed character in his writings, sometimes quoting direct segments of her individual diaries in his function. Zelda prepared mention of the in a 1922 mock review in the New York Tribune, suggesting that "[i]t appears to me that on 1 page I recognized a part of an aged diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared after my wedding, and scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism starts at home" (Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings, 388).

Although Fitzgerald's passion lay in composing novels, they not sold perfectly enough to help the opulent life-style that he and Zelda adopted as New York celebrities. To supplement his money, he turned to composing brief stories for such publications as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire magazine, and sold film rights of his stories and novels to Hollywood studios. He was continually in financial trouble and usually necessary financing from his literary agent, Harold Ober, and his editor at Scribner's, Maxwell Perkins.

Fitzgerald started functioning on his 4th novel during the late 1920s but was sidetracked by financial problems that necessitated his composing commercial brief stories, and by the schizophrenia that struck Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald in 1930. Her psychological wellness stayed delicate for the rest of her lifetime. In 1932, she was hospitalized in Baltimore, Maryland. Scott rented the "La Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson, Maryland to function on his newest book, the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist, and his spouse Nicole, who is additionally 1 of his people. It was published in 1934 as Tender is the Night. While it wasn't received perfectly upon publication, and Scott continued to change it throughout the 1930s, the book's standing has since risen greatly.

Hollywood years

Although he reportedly found film function degrading, Fitzgerald was again in dire financial straits, and invested the 2nd half of the 1930s in Hollywood, functioning on commercial brief stories, scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (including some unfilmed function on Gone with all the Wind), and his fifth and final novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon. Published posthumously as The Last Tycoon, it was based found on the lifetime of movie executive Irving Thalberg. Scott and Zelda became estranged; she continued living in mental organizations found on the east coastline, while he lived with his lover Sheilah Graham, a film columnist, in Hollywood. From 1939 until his death, Fitzgerald mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through the character of Pat Hobby in a sequence of 17 brief stories, later accumulated as "The Pat Hobby Stories."

Illness and Death

Fitzgerald had clearly been an alcoholic since his university days, and he became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily thick drinking. This left him in bad wellness by the late 1930s. According to Zelda's biographer, Nancy Milford, Scott advertised that he had contracted tuberculosis, but she states that this was commonly a pretext to cover his drinking issues But, Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli contends that Fitzgerald did not surprisingly have repeated tuberculosis, and Nancy Milford reports that Fitzgerald biographer Arthur Mizener mentioned that Scott suffered a mild attack of tuberculosis in 1919, and in 1929 he had "what proven to be a tubercular hemorrhage". Given the extent of Scott's alcoholism, though, it is very possible that the hemorrhage was caused by bleeding from esophageal varices—enlarged veins in the esophagus that outcome from advanced liver condition. In spite of these severe issues, it was probably Fitzgerald's lifelong smoking habit that many damaged his wellness and caused the heart issues that eventually killed him.

Fitzgerald suffered 2 heart attacks in late 1940. After the initially, he was ordered by his doctor to avoid strenuous exertion and to obtain a initially floor apartment, which he did by moving in with Sheilah Graham. On the evening of December 20, 1940, he had his 2nd heart attack, and the upcoming day, December 21, while awaiting a see from his doctor, Fitzgerald collapsed in Graham's apartment and died. He was 44.
Among the attendants at a visitation held at a funeral house in Hollywood was Dorothy Parker, who reportedly cried and murmured "the bad son of the bitch," a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In another unusual coincidence, the writer Nathaniel West , who was a friend and admirer of Fitzgerald, was killed together with his spouse found on the method to Fitzgerald's services. Fitzgerald's remains were then shipped to Maryland, where his funeral was attended by few folks. Zelda died tragically in a fire at the Highland mental organization in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1948. The 2 were initially buried in Rockville Union Cemetery, but with all the permission and assistance of their just child, Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith, the Women's Club of Rockville had their bodies moved to the family plot in Saint Mary's Cemetery, in Rockville, Maryland.

Fitzgerald not completed The Love of the Last Tycoon. His notes for the novel were edited by his friend Edmund Wilson and published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. But, there is today important agreement that Fitzgerald intended the title of the book to be The Love of the Last Tycoon, as is reflected in a new 1994 edition of the book, edited by Fitzgerald scholar Matthew Bruccoli of the University of South Carolina.

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